Australia has found a way to deal with anti-vaxxer idiots who threaten all of our lives. Australian vaccination rates are at an all-time high after government removes anti-vaxxers' benefits Who would’ve thought? http://www.sciencealert.com/austral...e-the-govt-threatened-to-stop-family-payments Since the Australian government launched its 'No jab no pay' campaign on 1 January 2016, thousands of children have been vaccinated for the first time, as parents who previously refused to immunise their babies faced family payment cuts of up to $15,000 a year. In just seven months, 5,738 extra children have now been vaccinated, and another 148,000 who were not up-to-date with their immunisations have had their booster shots. According to the report, since the policy was introduced in January, the immunisation rate for one- and five-year-olds has now reached 93 percent for the first time ever - up from around 90 percent. "Vaccination rates had fallen to such a historically low level, that we were seeing the re-emergence of diseases that we had been free of for years," Social Services Minister Christian Porter told Matthew Doran at ABC News. "We were facing a situation where the medical community were telling us that 'herd immunity rates', as they call it, need to be 95 percent, and we were just dropping steadily below that." The 'No jab no pay' policy is pretty simple - you can "conscientiously object" to immunising your kid based on philosophical, religious, or "I read things on the Internet" reasons, but doing so means the government can withhold family payments worth up to $15,000 every year until you do. According to The Guardian, last year, the government announced that the only religious group that was eligible for religious exemptions, the Christian Scientists, would no longer be able to do so. Families receiving the government's Child Care Benefit, Child Care Rebate and the Family Tax Benefit (FTB) were given until March this year to get their kids' immunisations up to date to ensure that their payments would continue. The policy also stated that no child would be admitted to child care, pre-school, or kindergarten without having been vaccinated. “It means that all parents can be absolutely certain and secure now that when their kids are going into childcare, that the government’s enacted a policy that’s lifted the immunisations up for things like whooping cough and polio, so that kids are protected in childcare," Porter told the ABC. Yep, it might sound harsh to cut off family payments to those in need, but putting children at risk for absolutely no reason is pretty damn despicable. Let’s hope the numbers are even more impressive in another six months’ time, and that we can finally put an end to anti-vax sentiment in our country. Rest of the world, take note.
Listen folks: 1. Do vaccines cause autism?? what does that mean? Does every child who gets the vaccine develop autism? NO Has every child with autism had the vaccine? NO Is there an increased RISK of autism if the child has had the vaccine. Apparently there IS no increase in risk of developing autism for kids who have had the vaccine vs those who have not. But this is hard to prove or disprove. why?? Because you cannot do a controlled risk experiment. A controlled risk experiment would take two groups of children and match the groups for all other parameters and all medications except the vaccine, then give one group the vaccine and withhold the vaccine from the other group. Then measure (in a double-blind manner) the frequency of developing autism in one group vs the other. This is an experiment that has not and cannot be done. Children are not rabbits. What has been done are after the fact, meta analysis cohort studies: e.g. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134 The best data available, while not as conclusive as a double blind comparative study as I outlined above, DO NOT SUPPORT the idea that the vaccines cause autism. Does that mean that absolutely positively no child will ever develop autism as a result of his vaccines? NO. If vaccines are NOT given will children suffer from measles mumps and Rubella in increased numbers, ?? YES Is the risk of deaths and disability HIGHER from not giving the vaccine than from giving the vaccine? The physicians, scientists and statisticians from the CDC strongly believe so. Do we have a CDC because we need someone to make intelligent decisions about such issues? YES. Now here's the kicker. If I am not a population of people but one person and I live among other people who all have had the vaccine so that my risk of contracting these diseases from them is zero, would it be to my individual advantage NOT to get the vaccine since their vaccinations will protect me and then I would also avoid the small risk that may come from getting the vaccination myself?? YES